I Lost All My Money In A Scam!

A: "I was just scammed."
B: "Really? What happened?"
A: "Well, some guy I'd never met said he'd like to show me something really cool. But first, I'd have to give him my ATM card and PIN number."
B: "So, you just walked away, right?"
A: "No. It was supposed to be *really* cool."
B: "So you gave your ATM card and PIN number to a total stranger. And you're surprised that your account has been drained?"
A: "Yes."
B: "You're a bonehead."

OK Ricky - but it happens. My friend is 'older' than me, when I was given the object I said 'Do I know you? Thanks, but no thanks' and trashed it.

In the time it took me to IM 'My scam alert just went off' she'd been had...

So she was more trusting than me. I used to be a lot more trusting in SL. But the sheer volume of arseholes 'Free Basic Account!' has attracted has changed all that. I guess she's just been around longer and had got in the habit. Though I think she's wised up a bit now.

I wouldn't call it silly or self serving. Who's to say what constitutes a "true claim"? Sure, it would be nice to assume that every "warning" posted about an alleged badguy would be legitimate, but there's no way that would be the case. Any individual or group can accuse anyone of anything. That doesn't make it true.

If naming names were allowed, what would there be to stop me from coming on this board along with 10 or 20 of my friends and saying, "Introvert Petunia just scammed me out of all my money"? You and I would know it wasn't true of course, but no one else would. You could lose your reputation, your community standing, and your business (if you have one) overnight to a well executed witch hunt. The fact that you know you're innocent wouldn't matter. The damage would have been done.

The only way to prevent that particular form of potential abuse is to have a blanket policy that no one is allowed to say anything bad about anyone else by name. This is absolutely apropriate and very wise, not "silly" at all, and certainly not self-serving for LL. The policy is in place to protect the innocent. There's simply no other way to do that than to say no names, period.

The only part of the policy I disagree with is the fact that even after someone is found guilty by LL, we're still not allowed to name them. Once a person has been convicted, it should become a matter of public record, just as it would in RL. Accusations should NEVER be published, but convictions should.

Mightn't this be slightly more accurate, informative, and helpful? Almost everything you can do in SL is "safe"; debit permission is not but the game doesn't tell you that and "common knowledge" about protecting your credit cards in RL does not seemingly carry over well to SL.

Yes, the dupe in this case is a little negligent, but the SL user interface does contribute some to that ignorance.

Sounds like a security issue. Since we can buy L$ with RL money I too think you need to report this immediatly to LL. Hopefully you still have the object to give to them so they can investigate this.

Another scam (sounds like this one but trickier) is a couple so called business guys roaming around trying to sell their *Donation Jars*

They asked me if I would purchase one...(I am easy what can I say) I had them show it to me and then purchased one hoping they would just go away. Well instead of going away they kept insisting that I put it out so they could observe people using it...hahaha right.....

So I drop it to the ground and up pops the blue box asking to take money from me....I clicked no and asked them why it would do such a thing if its a *donation jar* of course they said it is normal...I knew better...

What was strange was I left this item out that I purchased and about an hour later I get an IM from another Casino Owner (camp and play type) asking to return something from my land that was lost (and yes, an object was on my land of his) I imed my BF to send it back (I was shopping) and when I got back to my land I see my *donation jar* had mysteriously vanished...things that make you go hmmmmmmmm.

These 2 guys went as far as setting up the profiles to look like they were a couple old men from Florida, pics and all...was quite funny, well I take that back, one had a pic of Al Capone...hehe.

I still have one of these wonderful donation things (has a rocket if someone pays 5 linden) , I just can't figure out how if I was given an object how someone could have it returned to themselves?

Buyer Beware holds true in SL as in RL.

Wouldn't it be simple enough for LL to just change the color of the authorization box to red for anything that is requesting a debit of your Linden$?

Yes, that would be better; almost anything would be better than the current way.

Agree completely - a change to the Permission_Debit dialog box wouldn't break anything - and could potentially save some new residents some heartache.

Maybe a Hotline post is in order. In fact... writing one now

It can't return itself, but it can destroy itself. Pretty easily. The script just says llDie() and bam, it's gone. Not unrezzed, but completely erased. Covering their trails, maybe, set to erase after a period of time to eliminate evidence.

I posted the name of teh group that I had a problem with and the Lindens edited my post and removed the group name. I see many posts with group names mentioned and they are not edited in any way. The no-names-mentioned policy is opening the door for SL to become a Scammer's Paradise.

I wouldn't even allow permission to be animated at first. I thought that dialog box was intended as a warning so I'd say no and leave the area.

A friend of mine joined and was leary of the freebies people tried to pass him in the welcome area, too.

I like that version MUCH better!

Red would be great! Good Idea

The lindens have contacted me about this and i hope to have it resolved soon. I know it was stupid for me to click it now, but at the time i was interested and thought it might tp me to some place for like a job offering place. I was way wrong and now im poor again. lol

Hey, I've got an even better idea. This is based on my experience with supporting users using applications like Internet Explorer, which up a variety of dialogs on the theme of "SCARY_SOUNDING_WEB_PAGE wants to do REALLY_STUPID_THING [YES] [NO]". I have had people come to me and say, "hey, um, I clicked the REALLY_STUPID_THING dialog again, and now my computer's acting funny". The "I clicked the REALLY STUPID_THING dialog again" part is always good for a laugh. Because it doesn't matter what's in the dialog box, or how smart the person reading the dialog box is, some people will still just click OK because the computer pops up so many dialog boxes like this for routine actions that they've been TRAINED to click OK. I've got users with multiple doctorates, in technical subjects, who've been caught by this... because routine dialogs are just a bad idea for exceptional events.

If you want to give someone else permission to control your objects, you don't just have them click an object and you get "OTHER_AVATAR wants to control your objects, is this OK?"... no, you have to make them a friend, then go into friends, and turn it on...

If you want to let an object debit you, you should have to click on the object in your inventory, bring up its properties, find the "daily debit limit" field, and enter a number in there. This number would reset to zero on every change of ownership. You would STILL have to click on a dialog box to give it permission, as well.

This would (a) let you control how much the object could pull out, and (b) absolutely avoid being accidentally caught by a dialog. There would be NOTHING in your inventory that could take your money that you hadn't explicitly set up to do it.